City Wins OK for Use of Sewage Sludge as Fertilizer

The city of Los Angeles has won permission from a state water board to begin trucking tons of sewage sludge to the Antelope Valley for use as farmland fertilizer, an environmentally controversial ruling that could open the door to more such uses in the county.

The 7-1 decision by the California Regional Water Quality Control Board was a major victory for the city, which is seeking a cheaper and closer-to-home alternative for some of the sludge it has been trucking to farm fields in Riverside County and Yuma, Ariz. The decision is final unless there is an appeal within 30 days.

The ruling marks the first time land application of wet sewage sludge has been permitted in the fast-growing Antelope Valley, and one of only a few times it has been permitted anywhere in Los Angeles County, although the practice is more common elsewhere in the country.

Foes of the project called the board’s ruling precedent-setting and said it could encourage more such efforts.

Ron Kettle, a county sanitation official, said the decision might encourage the county to try the same approach with Lancaster and Palmdale sludge that is now piling up in those cities.

Under the permit, Bio Gro Systems Inc.--a private company that has the contract to transport the city’s sludge--will truck an average of 80 to 100 tons a day of the city’s concentrated sewage to the Antelope Valley. It will be spread and tilled into the soil of a 640-acre ranch Bio Gro purchased about 10 miles west of Lancaster.

The daily Antelope Valley haul represents about 7% of the 1,350 tons of the mud-like waste produced by the city each day. Los Angeles dumped it all into Santa Monica Bay until the federal government halted the practice on environmental grounds in late 1987. Since then, the sludge has gone either to landfills or remote farms.

The state board’s decision came late Thursday night after a more than three-hour public hearing in Lancaster. The water board staff, Los Angeles officials and farmers insisted the practice is safe, but local environmental and water agency officials remained unconvinced.

“The city of Los Angeles feels this is not only an environmentally sound program, but can be an environmentally beneficial program,” said Sheila Molyneux, a city sanitation official. She said sludge will improve crop yields and reduce the need for scarce water, harmful pesticides and commercial fertilizer.

Under the water board’s action, the city and Bio Gro will be required to conduct extensive water and soil sampling, and crops grown with the sludge cannot be used for human consumption. A Bio Gro spokeswoman said the sludge spreading could begin within several months.

Local activists argued that the sludge could contaminate ground water and pose a health hazard. They also accused Los Angeles of trying to export its problems. “If they produce it in L.A., it should be gotten rid of in L.A.,” said Marty Koppel, director of a local water agency.

Local environmentalists also said the board’s decision will pave the way for the Antelope Valley to become a sludge dumping ground for Los Angeles. City and Bio Gro officials acknowledged they are interested in expanding the program, but have yet to seek permission to use additional sites.

Bio Gro originally proposed a much larger program involving five Antelope Valley sites totaling 3,500 acres and as much as 400 to 500 tons a day of sludge. But after that plan was disclosed in March, the four private farm owners dropped out, leaving only Bio Gro.

The Antelope Valley became even more important to Los Angeles as an outlet recently when health officials in Riverside County imposed a temporary halt to sludge spreading in Blythe, where Bio Gro had been trucking much of Los Angeles’ output after some Blythe area residents voiced water contamination concerns.

Los Angeles County has had only two similar projects, officials said. The county sanitation districts until recently spread sludge on fields at the jail farm on the Peter J. Pitchess Honor Ranch near Saugus, and the Las Virgenes Municipal Water District has an ongoing project in Calabasas.